Solana Flips Fellow Ethereum Rival Cardano as SOL Nears All-Time High

SOL, the native coin of the smart contract-enabled blockchain Solana, has risen in price by 7% over the last 24 hours to become the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko.

In doing so, it has flipped Cardano's ADA, which has been unable to keep pace with its fellow "Ethereum killer." ADA's price is up 2% on the day, but it has shed 8% of its value over the last week. Solana's market cap now stands at above $64 billion, compared to $63.5 billion for Cardano.

Solana has been faster out of the gate than Cardano, moving quickly to bring the principle aspects of Ethereum—smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, NFTs, and the like—to a speedier and less-congested network. 

Though the network's speed has come with potential security drawbacks and several days of network outages this year, the metrics remain positive. The price of SOL reached an all-time high of $219.05 just eight days ago, and the current price of nearly $213 is just slightly off the pace. Moreover, according to crypto stats site DeFi Llama, the value of crypto assets in Solana DeFi applications is at a record high—letting people swap assets, earn interest, and borrow funds without a third party.

Cardano, meanwhile, had a shaky smart contract launch in September and has yet to build a comparable ecosystem of decentralized applications. However, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson—one of the creators of Ethereum—has been touring East Africa to gin up interest in the network. His IOHK labs recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Burundi.